Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures

"Here, Drabble; help me to deliver thae papers."

The Drabble glanced at Cleg to make out if he meant to sell him to justice. That was indeed almost an impossibility. But the Drabble did not know how far the evil communications of Sunday schools might have corrupted the original good manners of the Captain of the Sooth-Back Gang.

However, there was that in Cleg's face which gave him confidence. The Drabble grabbed the papers and was found busily delivering them up one side of the street while Cleg Kelly took the other, when Constable Gilchrist, reinforced by a friend, came in sight over the wall by the aid of a clothes-prop and the nicks in the stones.

Now the peaceful occupation of delivering evening newspapers is not a breach of the peace nor yet a contravention of the city bylaws. Constable Gilchrist was disappointed. He was certain that he had seen that boy "loitering with intent"; but here he was peacefully pursuing a lawful avocation. The Drabble had a reason, or at least an excuse, for being on the spot. So the chase was in vain, and Constable Gilchrist knew it. But his companion was not so easily put off the scent.

"Cleg Kelly," he cried, "I see you; hae you a care, my son, or you'll end up alongside of your father."

"Thank ye, sir," said Cleg Kelly. "Buy a News, sir?"

"Be off, you impudent young shaver!" cried the sergeant, laughing.

And Cleg went off.

"That's a smart boy, and doing well," said Constable Gilchrist.

"Decent enough," returned the sergeant, "but he's in a bad shop at Roy's, and he'll get no good from that Drabble loon!"

And this was a truth. But at that moment, at the back of the Tinklers' Lands, the Drabble was getting much good from Cleg Kelly. Cleg had off his coat and the Drabble was being "warmed."

"That'll learn ye to touch the Kavannahs' bed!" cried Cleg.

And the Drabble sat down.

"That's for miscaain' my faither!"

The Drabble sat down again at full length.

"That's for tellin' me to say my prayers! I learn you to meddle wi' my prayers!"

Thus Cleg upheld the Conscience Clause.

But the Drabble soon had enough. He warded Cleg off with a knee and elbow, and stated what he would do when he met him again on a future unnamed occasion.

He would tell his big brother, so he would, and his big brother would smash the face of all the Kellys that ever breathed.

Cleg was not to be outdone.

"I'll tell my big brother o' you, Drabble. He can fecht ten polissmen, and he could dicht the street wi' your brither, and throw him ower a lamp-post to dry."

Cleg and the Drabble felt that they must do something for the honour of their respective houses, for this sort of family pride is a noble thing and much practised in genealogies.

So, pausing every ten yards to state what their several big brothers would do, and with the fellest intentions as to future breaches of the peace, the combatants parted. The afternoon air bore to the Drabble from the next street —

"You – let – the Kavannahs – alane frae this oot – or it'll be the waur for you!"

The Drabble rubbed his nose on his sleeve, and thought that on the whole it might be so.

Then he took out three papers which he had secreted up his sleeve, and went joyfully and sold them. The Drabble was a boy of resource. Cleg had to come good for these papers to Mistress Roy, and also bear her tongue for having lost them. She stopped them out of his wages. Then Cleg's language became as bad as that of an angry Sunday school superintendent. The wise men say that the Scots dialect is only Early English. Cleg's was that kind, but debased by an admixture of Later Decorated.

He merely stated what he meant to do to the Drabble when he met him again. But the statement entered so much into unnecessary detail that there is no need to record it fully.

ADVENTURE X.

THE SQUARING OF THE POLICE

Cleg was free and barefoot. His father was "in" for twelve months. Also it was the summer season, and soft was the sun. The schools were shut – not that it mattered much as to that, for secular education was not much in Cleg's way, compulsory attendance being not as yet great in the land. Cleg had been spending the morning roosting on railings and "laying for softies" – by which he meant conversing with boys in nice clean jackets, with nice clean manners, whose methods of war and whose habit of speech were not Cleg's.

Cleg had recently entered upon a new contract with the mistress of Roy's paper shop. He was now "outdoor boy" instead of "indoor boy," and he was glad of it. He had also taken new lodgings. For when the police took his father to prison, to the son's great relief and delight, the landlord of the little room by the brickfield had cast the few sticks of furniture and the mattress into the street, and, as he said, "made a complete clearance of the rubbish." He included Cleg.

But it was not so easy to get rid of Cleg, for the boy had his private hoards in every crevice and behind every rafter. So that very night, with the root of a candle which he borrowed from a cellar window to which he had access (owing to his size and agility), he went back and ransacked his late home. He prised up the boards of the floor. He tore aside the laths where the plaster had given way. He removed the plaster itself with a tenpenny nail where it had been recently mended. He tore down the entire series of accumulated papers from the ceiling, disturbing myriads of insects both active and sluggish which do not need to be further particularised.

"I'll learn auld Skinflint to turn my faither's property oot on the street," said Cleg, his national instinct against eviction coming strongly upon him. "I'll wager I can make this place so that the man what built it winna ken it the morn's morning!"

And he kept his word. When Nathan, the Jew pawnbroker and cheap jeweller, came with his men to do a little cleaning up, the scene which struck them on entering, as a stone strikes the face, was, as the reporters say, simply appalling. The first step Mr. Nathan took brought down the ceiling-dust and its inhabitants in showers. The next took him, so far as his legs were concerned, into the floor beneath, for he had stepped through a hole, in which Cleg had discovered a rich deposit of silver spoons marked with an entire alphabet of initials.

The police inspector was summoned, and he, in his turn, stood in amaze at the destruction.

"It's that gaol-bird, young Kelly!" cried Nathan, dancing and chirruping in his inarticulate wrath. "I'll have him lagged for it – sure as I live."

"Aye?" said the inspector, gravely. He had his own reasons for believing that Mr. Nathan would do nothing of the sort. "Meantime, I have a friend who will be interested in this place."

And straightway he went down and brought him. The friend was the Chief Sanitary Inspector, a medical man of much emphasis of manner and abruptness of utterance.

"What's this? What's this? Clear out the whole damnable pig-hole! What d'ye mean, Jackson, by having such a sty as this in your district? Clean it out! Tear it down! It's like having seven bulls of Bashan in one stable. Never saw such a hog's mess in my life. Clear it out! Clear it out!"

The miserable Nathan wrung his hands, and hopped about like a hen.

"Oh, Doctor Christopher, I shall have it put in beautiful order – beautiful order. Everything shall be done in the besht style, I do assure you – "

"Best style, stuff and nonsense! Tear it down – gut it out – take it all away and bury it. I'll send men to-morrow morning!" cried the doctor, decidedly.

And Dr. Christopher departed at a dog-trot to investigate a misbehaving trap in a drain at Coltbridge.

The police inspector laughed.

"Are you still in a mind to prosecute young Kelly, Mr. Nathan?" he said.

But the grief and terror of the pawnbroker were beyond words. He sat down on the narrow stair, and laid his head between his hands.

"I shall be ruined – ruined! I took the place for a debt. I never got a penny of rent for it, and now to be made to spend money upon it – "

The police inspector touched him on the shoulder.

"If I were you, Nathan," he said, "I should get this put in order. If it is true that you got no rent for this place, the melting-pot in your back cellar got plenty."

"It's a lie – a lie!" cried the little man, getting up as if stung. "It was never proved. I got off!"

"Aye," said the inspector, "ye got off? But though 'Not proven' clears a man o' the Calton gaol, it keeps him on our books."

"Yes, yes," said the little Jew, clapping his hands as if he were summoning slaves in the Arabian Nights, "it shall be done. I shall attend to it at once."

And the inspector went out into the street, laughing so heartily within him that more than once something like the shadow of a grin crossed the stern official face which covered so much kindliness from the ken of the world.

The truth of the matter was that Cleg Kelly had squared the police. It is a strange thing to say, for the force of the city is composed of men staunchly incorruptible. I have tried it myself and know. The Edinburgh police has been honourably distinguished first by an ambition to prevent crime, to catch the criminal next, and, lastly, to care for the miserable women and children whom nearly every criminal drags to infamy in his wake.

Yet with all these honourable titles to distinction, upon this occasion the police had certainly been squared, and that by Cleg Kelly. And in this wise.

When Cleg had finished his search through the receptacles of his father and his own hidie-holes, he found himself in possession of as curious a collection of miscellaneous curiosities as might stock a country museum or set a dealer in old junk up in business. There were many spoons of silver, and a few of Britannia metal which his father had brought away in mistake, or because he was pressed for time and hated to give trouble. There were forks whole, and forks broken at the handle where the initials ought to have come, teapots with the leaves still within them, the toddy bowl of a city magnate – with an inscription setting forth that it had been presented to Bailie Porter for twenty years of efficient service in the department of cleaning and lighting, and also in recognition of his uniform courtesy and abundant hospitality. There were also delicate ormulu clocks, and nearly a score of watches, portly verge, slim Geneva, and bluff serviceable English lever.

Cleg brought one of his mother's wicker clothes-baskets which had been tossed out on the street by Mr. Nathan's men the day before, and, putting a rich Indian shawl in the bottom to stop the crevices, he put into it all the spoil, except such items as belonged strictly to himself, and with which the nimble fingers of his father had had no connection.

Such were the top half of a brass candlestick, which he had himself found in an ash-backet on the street. He remembered the exact "backet." It was in front of old Kermack, the baker's, and he had had to fight a big dog to get possession, because the brass at the top being covered with the grease, the dog considered the candlestick a desirable article of vertu. There was a soap-box, for which he had once fought a battle; the basin he used for dragging about by a string on the pavement, with hideous outcries, whenever the devil within made it necessary for him to produce the most penetrating and objectionable noise he could think of. There was (his most valuable possession) a bright brass harness rein-holder, for which the keeper of a livery stable had offered him five shillings if he would bring the pair, or sixpence for the single one – an offer which Cleg had declined, but which had made him ever after cherish the rein-holder as worth more than all the jewellers' shops on Princes Street.

These and other possessions to which his title was incontrovertible he laid aside for conveyance to his new home, an old construction hut which now lay neglected in a builder's yard near the St. Leonards Station.

All the other things Cleg took straight over to the police-office near the brickfield, where his friend, the sergeant's wife, held up her hands at sight of them. Nor did she call her husband till she had been assured that Cleg had had personally nothing to do with the collection of them.

When the sergeant came in his face changed and his eyes glittered, for here was stolen property in abundance, of which the Chief – that admirable gentleman of the quiet manners and the limitless memory – had long ago given up all hope.

"Ah! if only the young rascal had brought us these things before Tim's trial, I would have got him twenty years!" said the Chief.

But though Cleg Kelly hated and despised his father, his hatred did not quite go that length. He did not love the police for their own sake, though he was friendly enough with many of the individual officers, and, in especial, with the sergeant's wife, who gave him "pieces" in memory of his mother, and, being a woman, also perhaps a little in memory of what his father had once seemed to her.

Cleg did not stay to be asked many questions as to how he came into possession of so many valuables. He had found them, he said; but he could not be induced to condescend upon the particulars of the discovery.

So the sergeant was forced to be content. But ever after this affair it was quite evident that Cleg was a privileged person, and did not come within Mr. Nathan's power of accusation. So it was manifest that Cleg Kelly had corrupted the incorruptible, and crowned his exploits by squaring the metropolitan police.

ADVENTURE XI.

THE BOY IN THE WOODEN HUT

The wooden hut where Cleg had taken up his abode was on the property of a former landlord, who in his time had tired of Tim Kelly as a tenant, and had insisted upon his removal, getting his office safe broken into in consequence. But Mr. Callendar had never been unkind to Isbel and Cleg. So the boy had kindly memories of the builder, and especially he remembered the smell of the pine shavings as Callendar's men planed deal boards to grain for mahogany. The scent struck Cleg as the cleanest thing he had ever smelled in his life.

So, with the help of an apprentice joiner, he set up the old construction hut, which, having been used many years ago in the making of the new coal sidings at the St. Leonards Station, had been thrown aside at the end of the job, and never broken up.

The builder saw Cleg flitting hither and thither about the yard, but, being accustomed to such visitors, he took no great notice of the boy, till one day, poking about among some loose rubbish and boards at the back of his yard, he happened to glance at the old hut. Great was his astonishment to see it set on its end, a window frame too large for the aperture secured on the outside with large nails driven in at the corners, a little fringe of soil scraped roughly about it as if a brood of chickens had worked their way round the hut, and a few solitary daisies dibbled into the loose earth, lying over on their sides, in spite of the small ration of water which had been carefully served out to each.

Thomas Callendar stood a moment gathering his senses. He had a callant of his own who might conceivably have been at the pains to establish a summer-house in his yard. But then James was at present at the seaside with his mother. The builder went round the little hut, and at the further side he came upon Cleg Kelly dribbling water upon the wilting daisies from a broken brown teapot, and holding on the lid with his other hand.

"Mercy on us! what are ye doing here, callant?" cried the astonished builder.

Cleg Kelly stood up with the teapot in his hand, taking care to keep the lid on as he did so. His life was so constant a succession of surprises provided against by watchfulness that hardly even an earthquake would have taken him unprepared.

He balanced the teapot in one hand, and with the other he pulled at his hat-brim to make his manners.

"If ye please, sir," he said, "they turned me oot at the brickyaird, and I brocht the bits o' things here. I kenned ye wadna send me away, Maister Callendar."

"How kenned ye that I wadna turn ye away, boy?" said the builder.

"Oh, I juist prefarred to come back here, at ony rate," said Cleg.

"But why?" persisted Mr. Callendar.

Cleg scratched the turned-up earth of his garden thoughtfully with his toe.

"Weel," he said, "if ye maun ken, it was because I had raither lippen2 to the deil I ken than to the deil I dinna ken!"

The builder laughed good-naturedly.

"So ye think me a deil?" he asked, making believe to cut at the boy with the bit of planed moulding he was carrying in his hand with black pencil-marks at intervals upon it as a measuring-rod.

"Ow, it's juist a mainner o' speaking!" said Cleg, glancing up at Mr. Callendar with twinkling eyes. He knew that permission to bide was as good as granted. The builder came and looked within. The hut was whitewashed inside, and the black edges of the boards made transverse lines across the staring white.

Cleg explained.

"I didna steal the whitewash," he said; "I got it frae Andrew Heslop for helpin' him wi' his lime-mixing.

"It's a fine healthsome, heartsome smell," the boy went on, noticing that the builder was sniffing. "Oh, man, it's the tar that ye smell," he again broke in. "I'm gaun to tar it on the ootside. It keeps the weather off famous. I gat the tar frae a watchman at the end o' the Lothian Road, where they are laying a new kind o' pavement wi' an awsome smell."

The interior of the hut was shelved, and upon a pair of old trestles was a good new mattress. The builder looked curiously at it.

"It was the Pleasance student missionary got it in for my mither to lie on afore she died," said Cleg in explanation.

"Aye, and your mither is awa," said the builder; "it's a release."

"Aye, it is that," said Cleg, from whose young heart sorrow of his mother's death had wholly passed away. He was not callous, but he was old-fashioned and world-experienced enough to recognise facts frankly. It was a release indeed for Isbel Kelly.

"Weel," said the builder, "mind ye behave yoursel'. Bring nae wild gilravage o' loons here, or oot ye gang."

"Hearken ye, Maister," said Cleg. "There's no a boy atween Henry Place an' the Sooth Back that wull daur to show the ill-favoured face o' him within your muckle yett. I'll be the best watch that ever ye had, Maister Callendar. See if I'm no!"

The builder smiled as he went away. He took the measuring-rod of white moulding in his hand, and looked at the marks to recall what particular business he had been employed upon. But even as he did so a thought struck him. He turned back.

"Mind you," he said to Cleg, "the first time that ye bring the faither o' ye aboot my yaird, to the curb-stane ye gang wi' a' your traps and trantlums!"

Cleg peeped elvishly out of his citadel.

"My faither," he said, "is snug in a far grander hoose than yours or mine, Maister Callendar. He has ta'en the accommodation for a year, and gotten close wark frae the Gowvernment a' the time!"

"What mean ye?" said the builder; "your faither never reformed?"

"Na, no that," answered Cleg; "but he got a year for ganging intil anither man's hoose without speering his leave. And I was there and saw the judge gie him a tongue-dressing afore he spoke oot the sentence. 'One year!' says he. 'Make it three, my Lord!' says I frae the back of the coort. So they ran me oot; but my faither kenned wha it was, for he cried, 'May hunger, sickness, and trouble suck the life from ye, ye bloodsucking son of my sorrow! Wait till I get hoult o' ye! I'll make ye melt off the earth like the snow off a dyke, son o' mine though ye are!'"

The respectable builder stood aghast.

"And your ain faither said the like o' that till ye?" he asked, with a look of awe in his face as if he had been listening to blasphemy. "And what did you say to him?"

"Faith! I only said, 'I hope ye'll like the oakum, faither!'"

ADVENTURE XII.

VARA KAVANNAH OF THE TINKLERS' LANDS

Cleg having finished his dispositions, shut to his door, and barred it with a cunning bolt, shot with string, which he had constructed till he should be able to find an old lock to manipulate with the craft inherited from his father. Then he set forth for the Tinklers' Lands, to visit his friends the Kavannahs. He had delivered his papers in the early morning, and now he was free till the evening. For since a threatened descent of the police, Mistress Roy, that honest merchant, had discouraged Cleg from "hanging round" after his work was finished. She attempted to do the discouraging with a broomstick or anything else that came handy. But Cleg was far too active to be struck by a woman. And, turning upon his mistress with a sudden flash of teeth like the grin of a wild cat, he sent that lady back upon the second line of her defences – into the little back shop where that peculiar company assembled which gave to Roy's paper-shop its other quality of shebeen.

Cleg had just reached the arched gateway which led into the builder's yard, when he saw, pottering along the sidewalk twenty yards before him the squat, bandy-legged figure of his late landlord, Mr. Nathan. He had been going the round of the builders, endeavouring to discover which of them would effect the repairs of Tim Kelly's mansion at the least expense, and at the same time be prepared to satisfy the fiery Inspector of Sanitation.

Without a moment's hesitation, and as a mere matter of duty, Cleg bent his head, and, running full-tilt between his late landlord's legs, he overset him on the pavement and shot ahead on his way to make his morning call on the Kavannahs. The fulfilment of healthy natural function required that a well-conducted boy of good principles should cheek a policeman and overset a Jew landlord whenever met with. In such a war there could be no truce or parley.

Tinklers' Lands was in one of the worst parts of the city. Davie Dean's Street goes steeply down hill, and has apparently carried all its inhabitants with it. Tinklers' Lands is quite at the foot, and the inhabitants have come so low that they can fear no further fall. The Kavannahs, as has been said, dwelt in the cellar of the worst house in Tinklers' Lands.

Cleg ran down into the area and bent over the grating.

"Vara!" he cried, making a trumpet of the bars and his hands.

"Aye, Cleg, is that you?" said Vara. "She's oot; ye can come in."

So Cleg trotted briskly down the slimy black steps, from which the top hand-rail had long since vanished. The stumpy palings themselves would also have disappeared if they had been anything else than cast metal, a material which can neither be burned nor profitably disposed of to the old junk man.

Vara met him at the foot. She was a pleasant, round-faced, merry-eyed girl of ten – or, rather, she would have been round-faced but for the pitiful drawing about the mouth and the frightened look with which she seemed to shrink back at any sudden movement near her. As Cleg arrived at the door of the cellar a foul, dank smell rose from the depths to meet him; and he, fresh from the air and cleanliness of his own new abode among the shavings and the chips, noticed it as he would not have done had he come directly from the house by the brickfield.

"She gaed awa' last nicht wi' an ill man," said Vara, "and I hae seen nocht o' her since."

Vara Kavannah spoke of Sheemus Kavannah as "faither," but always of her mother as "she." To-day the girl had her fair hair done up in a womanly net and stowed away on the top of her head. When one has the cares of a house and family, it is necessary to dress in a grown-up fashion. Indeed, in some of her moods, when the trouble of Hugh and the baby lay heavy on her, Vara looked like a little old woman, as if she had been her own fairy godmother fallen upon evil times.

But to-day she had her head also tied in a napkin, rolled white and smooth about her brows. Cleg glanced at it with the quick comprehension which comes from a kindred bitterness.

"Her?" he queried, as much with his thumb and eyebrow as with his voice.

"Aye," said Vara, looking down at the floor, for in the Lands such occurrences were not spoken of outside the family; "yestreen."

Hearing the voices at the door, little Hugh, Vara's brother of four, came toddling unevenly upon legs which ought to have been chubby, but which were only feeble and uncertain. He had one hand wrapped in a piece of white rag; and, whenever he remembered, he carried it in his other hand and wept over it with a sad, wearying whimper.